Weekly Music Roundup: Roots Bachata, Booze Music, and Balkan Bhangra

Rescue your Tuesdays with our weekly roundup of music news, videos, and songs that just might help you get through the rest of the week. This week, Moby rocks out, an alternative to internet cats, and sounds from the Balkans, the Dominican Republic, and the London stage. 

Moby’s Instrumental “Choir”

Moby’s new single with the Void Pacific Choir (a band, not a vocal ensemble) is “The Light Is Clear In My Eyes.” Though known widely for his electronic dance and techno music, Moby has throughout his career shown an affinity for driving post-punk guitars, and this song might be as close as he’s come to that dark strain of Joy Division/Interpol-influenced rock. The video is a jarring little creep-fest featuring some of the animal-headed friends we met on Moby’s last album, Innocents. 

Balkan Brass Band Brings a Bhangra Beat

This century has seen the rise of a surprising and vibrant Balkan music scene here in New York, as more listeners and musicians get used to the idea of brass instruments playing at breakneck speed in odd rhythms that nonetheless leave everybody sweaty and breathless because suddenly they realize they’ve been dancing the whole time. And Raya Brass Band has been a part of that scene over the course of seven years and, now, four records. The new one, simply called Raya, will be out on November 13, and what makes Raya’s sets worth hearing is the way they blend Balkan brass music with Ethiopian pop, or salsa, or electronic grooves. In the song “Unify,” the rockin’ horns float over an irrepressible dance beat borrowed from Punjabi bhangra music. 

Tori Amos’s Musical Fairytale

For over twenty years the singer, songwriter, and pianist Tori Amos has resolutely plowed her own furrow in the music world; telling stories that were harrowing or knowing or pastoral, but always personal. With her wide-ranging sound, which includes recent forays into classical music, she seems like the rare pop/rock songwriter who could actually make the move to musicals. Which she has done.  It took seven years, but The Light Princess opened in London in 2013, and now we’re getting to hear a bit of the cast recording. It’s based on an 1864 fairy tale by George Macdonald, the Scottish writer who mentored Lewis Carroll and whose novel Lilith was a progenitor of the fantasy novels of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. But back to Tori Amos. Her song “Amphibiava” begins in pretty standard musical mode but by the halfway mark has become something distinctively Amos’s own. 

Alex Feder Has Had Too Much To Drink

Remarkably, Alex Feder’s powers of observation remain intact, even as he recounts in a plainspoken yet poetic way how he got up to 14 drinks in one night. Alternating spoken verses and a simple but poignant chorus, Feder offers a song that should come with the old warning: kids don’t try this at home. Do check out the illustrated video, though, which adds a wonderful layer of charm and emotion.

Caribbean Roots Music

Born on his family’s farm in the Dominican Republic, Joan Soriano has become known as The Duke Of Bachata. Why stop at that level of royalty, you ask? Because New York City, with its large Dominican community, has developed a flashy, R&B-influenced version of bachata that has become big business, and Bronx-born Romeo Santos, who has sold out both Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden, already occupies the throne as The King Of Bachata. But the roots of bachata lie in humble bands in Dominican farms and slums, often playing home-made guitar-like instruments and drums. As Joan Soriano showed on a previous visit to the Soundcheck studio, this music could be both earthy and irresistible. Now he’s got a new album called Me Decidi (“I decided”), and it is, as usual, a family affair.  Joan’s brother Fernando takes the lead vocals on this catchy tune, called “Tus Cartas Llegan” (“your letters arrive”). 

Tired of Internet Cats? Try Mal Blum’s Dog

I’ve always been a dog person, and more than that, a big dog person. I generally don’t like little, cat-size dogs. But I have to say, Mal Blum’s little guy (some kind of Chihuahua mix?) really steals the show in the new video for her song “Robert Frost.” It’s from Blum’s brand new album, You Look A Lot Like Me – which is, somewhat improbably for someone who looks like she might be all of 14, her fifth album. The song is punky and fun; the editing simple and fun; the dog is hyperactive and fun… you get the idea.